March 11, 2024

The Wilderness Society and Glacier-Two Medicine Alliance (GTMA) submitted comments today regarding the draft Environmental Assessment for the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest's proposed "Forest-wide Prescribed Fire Project." While both organizations strongly supported efforts to reduce wildfire risk and restore fire-resilient forest ecosystems, we expressed significant concerns about the project's scale and lack of specificity.

GTMA and the Wilderness Society's primary concerns included: ambiguity about treatment acreage and program duration; lack of site-specific information; absence of clear site-selection criteria; insufficient analysis of climate change impacts; and no requirement that all projects include prescribed fire despite the project's name. We recommended shortening the authorization from 20 to 10 years with a 5-year review, providing maps of priority treatment areas, clarifying maintenance activities, and addressing how reopened roads will be managed to prevent unauthorized use and spread of invasive species. We also requested that only hand treatments and prescribed fire be allowed in recommended Wilderness and Wilderness Study Areas.

The Wilderness Society and GTMA emphasized the need for greater transparency, accountability, and ecological consideration in project implementation. We suggested the Forest Service create a decision tree for site selection that prioritizes areas where wildfire poses severe risk to communities and dry lower-elevation forest types, while de-emphasizing sites in high severity fire regimes outside the wildland-urban interface. We believe a full Environmental Impact Statement would better evaluate the potential effects of such a large-scale program.

GTMA and the Wilderness Society submitted additional comments and suggestions. To learn more about our views on the Forest-wide Prescribed Fire Project, read the full comments here.